Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Buster Murdaugh's New Chapter

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Two years after his father is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, Buster Murdaugh has begun a new chapter in his life. The surviving son  married his longtime girlfriend Brooklynn White. Buster Murdaugh has maintained a low profile since his father's conviction, but during the trial, he said he didn't believe his father guilty.   Joining Nancy Grace Today: Troy Slaten - Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorney, Slaten Lawyers, APC, Twitter @TroySlaten  Dr. Shari Schwartz - Forensic Psychologist (specializing in Capital Mitigation and Victim Advocacy), www.panthermitigation.com, Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrialDoc, Author: "Criminal Behavior" and "Where Law and Psychology Intersect" Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics: Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet", Host: "Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan" Dave Mack - Investigative Reporter, Crime Online See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime stories with Nancy Grace. In the last days, finally, some good news for the son of convicted killer, former lawyer Alex Murdoch. His son Buster, who attended his trial faithfully every single day, marries his fiancée, Brooklyn White, in a South Carolina wedding four years after his mother and brother were gunned down dead. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.

Thank you for being with us. The only living son of convicted killer Alex Murdoch has married his longtime fiancée in a private yet luxurious wedding in South Carolina. I recall distinctly sitting right behind Buster Murdoch as he sat through his dad's double murder trial in the shooting deaths of wife Maggie and son Paul, Buster, 32, and fiancé Brooklyn White tied the knot in front of family and friends at a former hunting estate in Beaufort, South Carolina.

It's in a Posse, Riverside community on Ladies Island. I wonder what mixed feelings he must have had as he stood at the altar waiting for Brooklyn to walk down the aisle without his father or his brother standing in as best man and without seeing his mother beaming on the front row. The wake of pain left behind by Alex Murdoch seemingly never ends. What happened that night at Murdoch's hunting lodge?

Fitts News is reporting sources close to the investigation say that physical forensic evidence directly ties Alex Murdoch to the double homicide. Fitts News citing sources close to the investigation claims Alex Murdoch is the only person identified as a person of interest. On June 7th, 2021, Alex Murdoch called 9-1-1 around 10.07 p.m. to report that he had found the bodies of his 52 year old wife, Maggie,

and 22 year old son, Paul Fitz News claims Maggie Murdoch was shot and killed by a semi-automatic rifle around the same time as her son was killed. With us an all star panel to make sense of what we know right now. High profile lawyer out of L.A. Troy Slayton, forensic psychologist, author of Criminal Behavior and Where Law and Psychology Intersect, Dr. Sherry Schwartz, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, and star of a new hit series, Body Bags, with Joseph Scott Morgan joining us.

But straight out to Dave Mat, CrimeOnline.com, investigative reporter. Dave, I mean, I don't know that I need a forensics expert to tell me there's going to be evidence linking Alec Murdoch to the dead bodies of his wife and his son. And I'll tell you why, Dave. We've talked about it several times off air. You have him, Alec Murdoch, then arranging a hit on himself. Remember that? When he's found bleeding from the head out on a rural road,

nothing he said made any sense about changing his tire, and then he said some guys came along and took a shot at him. Turns out his dope dealer was paid to shoot him in the head. Now, think about it. think about it Dave Mac, this is just weeks after his wife and son are shot in the head execution style. Wow,

I wonder who orchestrated that? So you're telling me Dave Mac that there are reports not of just deduction such as what I just did two and two equals four, but actual physical forensic evidence linking Alec Murdoch to the double murder. Absolutely Nancy. Here's what we've got. At least one of the weapons used in the double homicide of Maggie and Paul Murdoch belong to the Murdoch family. We've got deputies finding shell casings at the scene that they're obviously matching to at least one of the guns but two different guns were supposedly used. One was a semi-automatic rifle. We've got agents on the scene that are searching a river,

the Salcahatchee River, a swampy area, approximately two miles south of Moselle that are getting more evidence. And we've got, again, this evidence that ties all of this together. Maggie Murdaugh's cell phone is found along the rural South Carolina road just outside the family's 1700 acre hunting

lodge the day after the murder. All of that put together is what we're dealing with in terms of physical evidence. So you're saying that from those items and whatever they've dredged up out of the Socahatchie, you're saying that it's your belief that on those items is the physical evidence they're talking about. And not only that, not only that, wait, what about a potential gunshot residue test they may have done on Alex Murdoch at the time he found his dead wife and son. And did you mention that they towed the company vehicle that night and processed it? Did you say that Dave Mack?

I am now that they actually did impound. It was a 2021 Chevy Suburban that was registered to the Murdaugh law firm. And all of this is being reported through Fitz News. That's where we're getting this information, Nancy. Law enforcement on the scene that night collected all of this evidence that we know how this works out from a ballistic standpoint to the residue test. The police are playing this so close to the vest,

but we're getting enough information to be able to tie it together to see these links are all pointing back to Alex Murdoch. Guys, I want you to take a listen to Alex Murdoch. Guys, I want you to take a listen to Alex Murdoch's 4147 Moselle Road. I need the police to answer immediately before my wife and child stop badly. Okay, you said 4147 Moselle Road and Allison? You said 4147 Moselle Road and Allison? Yes sir, 4147 Moselle Road.

Stay on the line with me, okay? Yes sir, stay on the line with me, okay? Calling Accounting Communications. I have Alex Murdock on the line, call us from 4147, Moselle Road. He's advising that his wife and child was shot. Okay, and sir, give me the address again. It's 4147, Moselle Road, I've been up to it now, it's bad. Okay. And are they breathing? No, ma'am. Okay. And you said it's your wife and your son?

My wife and my son. Are they in a vehicle? No, ma'am. They're on the ground out at my kennel. Jackie, did they have the death penalty in South Carolina? I'm pretty sure that they did. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. No man there on the ground out at my kennel. Jackie, did they have the death penalty in South Carolina? I'm pretty sure that they do. Okay, Troy Slayton, high profile lawyer joining me out of LA. Hey, we tried to give Alex Murdoch the benefit of the doubt.

Well, okay, you tried. But now that I know, as I suspected, long suspected, he is the one that finds the dead bodies. He is the one that owns the residence where they're found. He's the one looking at a big, fat, juicy divorce from a wife who is likely to uncover during her discovery process, her legal discovery process, that he has been embezzling money from all of his clients and and sniffing it up his nose for years. It's all gonna come out in her divorce and they are Murdoch guns. We learned that on day one. A source told us day one that at least one of the guns was a Murdoch gun. All right. So what more do I need to know for Pete's sake? Then he stages his own suicide, botched I might add, and lies through his teeth about it until we find out his doper friend is the one that grazed his head.

I mean, he's lied about everything. Remember, even his lawyer came out and actually said he had brain damage. He showed up in court the next week. He didn't even have on...did he have on a band-aid? That's some brain injury, Troy Slayton. I mean, what more do you need to know? This man has lied about everything, and he's the one that faces a pecuniary gain, money gain, with the death of his wife and son. And now we have Dave Mack telling us that reports are Alex Murdoch is linked forensically, physical evidence, I'm talking about fingerprints, DNA, to the double murders, and now when I listen

to that 911 call, I mean, I'm taking that with a box of salt, Troy Slaton. Well, we're being told that the evidence is substantial, that it's serious, but we don't know exactly what that physical evidence connection is yet to Alex Murdoch. What's interesting is that a different gun was used in each one of the murders at the time of that double homicide that happened at the same time.

Why would somebody, why would one individual use two different guns on two people at the same time? It doesn't make sense. Well, it may not make sense, but does it make sense to murder your wife and son? Does that make sense to you, Troy Slaton? Criminals do all sorts of crazy things. It's not up to a prosecutor to lurk around inside a killer's mind and figure out why. But things have to make sense. And the problem that the prosecutors have here is they could just confuse the jury. They're charging him right now with 51 counts. That means 51 separate crimes and 51 sets of elements that a jury would have to go through to try and convict.

Wait, don't cut it yet. Troy Slayton. that a jury would have to go through to try and convict. Wait, don't cut it yet. Troy Slayton. The current charges relate to what? The 51 counts you're referring to. Refer to possible embezzlement and misappropriation of funds from his grandfather and great grandfather and father's law firm that was set up for a hundred years

in South Carolina. And clients. And clients were now finding out that he apparently, Dave Mack, isn't there a report he embezzled funds from a client that was paraplegic and brain damaged? Actually, he was a young man who was deaf, who was in a car accident with his mother and another friend who he, the accident left him as a paraplegic and in a home and Murdaugh is alleged to have taken all of the money over $300,000 that was due for the death paraplegic man's family as well as the money from his demands mother and the other person in

the car hundreds of thousands of dollars intended to go to this family. That was a little TMI, but I'll take it. You can never know enough facts, Dave Mac, but what you told me actually just made me feel a little nauseous. Crime stories with Nancy Grace. Crime stories with Nancy Grace. The only remaining son of convicted killer Alex Murdoch has happiness. Buster, who endured many, many false claims that he was somehow involved in the death of a young man in his community, Stephen Smith, has married fiancé Brooklyn White, a lawyer,

in South Carolina, four years after the family double murder. The wedding was reportedly beautiful, with 50 people attending. It looks as if Buster Murdoch's wife has chosen to take his surname on social media. The exact date of the wedding and any and all details were kept secret until the two officially married and what has been reported in a beautiful ceremony. Some of the items we've learned about on the wedding register a black stone griddle, a Yeti Tundra hard cooler, and a Dyson robot vacuum.

The public's not really sure when the two started dating, but it's believed they met when they were both law students at University of South Carolina Law School. Reportedly, Brooklyn White was actually with Buster Murdoch when his father called to tell him Maggie and Paul had been killed. As you recall, Murdoch got two life sentences without parole last year in the shootings. What happened? Direct physical evidence. Direct evidence is like an eyewitness, DNA, fingerprint, okay?

Circumstantial evidence is you were at the scene of the crime. You're the one that reported the murders. You're the one that reported the murders. You're the one that has the motive. Your glove was found there on the scene. That doesn't a murder make. So, that's what we know right now. And with that as a backdrop, Joe Scott Morgan and Dr. Sheri Schwartz, I want you to take a listen to more of Alex Murdoch's 911 call when he seemingly found his wife and son Paul dead, shot dead behind his hunting lodge with a Murdoch gun. Take a listen to our cut, 26. What color is your house on the outside? What color is your house on the outside? Uh, it's white. You can't see it from the road.

Okay, is it a house or a mobile home? It's a house. Okay, and what is your name? My name is Alex Murdoch. Okay, did you hear anything or did you come home and find them? No ma'am, I've been gone. I just came back. Okay, and was anyone else supposed to be at your house? No ma'am.

Please hurry. We're getting somebody out there too. Okay. When you listen to that, knowing what we now know, what I'd like to know, and I asked this on day one, to you, Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator, forensics expert, how could they, what time, what's my time window for the time of death? And that's so important because Alex Murdoch said that he was at the hospital seeing his sick father, who passed away a few days later.

I need to know what time he was there, the drive time between the hospital and the hunting lodge, and the time of death. How do I know Maggie and Paul weren't shot three hours before he went to the hospital? How do I know they weren't shot just before he called 911, placing him virtually at the scene of the crime at the time the murders occurred? The time of death is crucial. It's critical. What about it, Joe Scott? Yeah, you might not know, we might not know, but SLED does. When they showed up at that scene, Nancy, one of the things that they did was...

South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Go ahead. Yeah, they began to do a postmortem assessment of the bodies, and simply what that means is they're going to check for all those things we look for, Nancy, the rigidity of the body, how stiff it is relative to rigor mortis, postmortem levity which is the settling the blood, and also also they're going to check the body temperature. Now the reason those things are important is that we can kind of theoretically timestamp each one of those events. So the further, for instance, with algor mortis or the body temperature changes for the first hour after death, our bodies

generally lose 1.5 to 2 degrees of our total core body temperature in that first hour. After that, it bleeds off one degree, one degree for 12 hours. All right? So, if you think that the body may have been down for, I don't know, we're looking, maybe the body when they do the body core temperature is maybe at 90 degrees, then we could suppose that perhaps these bodies had been down anywhere from seven to eight hours at that point in time. And Joe Scott, wouldn't the algorithm you're using vary based on the ambient temperature

of the temperature at the time? It does, it does. And you know, the way I explained it is that after that 12th hour, Nancy, we become an inanimate object. All of the energy we generated has burned off at that point in time. Rigor mortis, rigor mortis, which means the stiffening of the limbs. The liver mortis, which is the settling of the blood. And what I mean by that is if you die on your back, your blood is no longer pumping through

your body and it will all settle down to the lowest common denominator. Like a glass of water, it all goes to the bottom of the glass. Same thing. So liver mortis, rigor mortis, body temperature and what else? Well, when we, you know, obviously when they get back to the morgue to do the autopsy, they're going to look at stomach content too. And that's a measurable, that moves at a measurable rate from our, you know, relative to our digestion. So if they ate at six o'clock that night and depended upon what they ate, you can expect, you know, perhaps the stomach to have been full.

All right. Because at that, at that point in time, peristalsis is going to stop. The food's going to stop moving through the body. You mean digestion? Yeah. And so it's going to be frozen. Quit using medical terms. Nobody else's going to be freezing medical terms. Nobody else on this panel is a medical doctor.

Please talk in regular people talk. Yeah. Well, if we already impressed me, okay, you don't have to keep trying. What I do want to impress though is this, this idea of the settling of the blood Nancy, because if somebody monkeyed around with those bodies and moved the bodies around during the night. Oh that one whoa whoa whoa I gotta write that down Troy Slayton I'm gonna circle back to you with that if the scene was staged i.e. if the bodies had been moved he's dead in the water I'm telling you because a random killer would not think to drag the bodies

around or pose them in a certain way, that has to be a known killer. Okay, hold on, got that. Was it staged? Go ahead. Sorry, Joe Scott. That's all right. So, you know, post-mortem levitity actually starts sooner than any, or is appreciable

sooner than any of these other things. So if, say for instance, the young Mardal was laying face down, okay, post-mortem levitity would have begun to be appreciable within 20 minutes of death, Nancy. The question is, is that after you get outside of that four-hour window and you've moved the body, it no longer migrates at that time. What about coagulation of blood? If the blood had already dried or not dried on the wounds, what would that tell you, Joe Scott Morgan? Well, yeah, because that, again, that's going to be environmentally dependent, barometric, the relative humidity and all that sort of thing. It's different being outdoors. So, you would have to have all of that information in order to computate that. So that's going to be less reliable.

So you're thinking that the physical evidence, what do you think the physical evidence is? Could there be a fingerprint on the shell casing? Could there be fingerprints on the guns? You know what I think it is? Here's my big reveal on this. I think this might have something to do reveal on this, I think this might have something to do with blood stains. And the reason I think that is that remember what Dave said, the young one, he took two shotgun wounds, Nancy. So if you've got an individual, the perpetrator, who is in a dominant position with a 12 gauge shotgun, I don't know if that's the gauge or not. And they're standing over this individual, shot in the chest and the head, guess what happens? You get a dynamic event with blood staining. The higher the velocity, the tinier the blood stain.

Okay, we're talking about very fine, all right? And that's gonna happen with a high velocity gunshot wound. So just suppose, just suppose for instance, he's kneeling over the body and he clutches his dear son to his chest. That's going to be transfer blood. That's going to look different to the people from the people with sled. When they see him and they take those pictures of him at the, at the, uh, at the lockup or wherever they took him afterwards and they take his clothes, which they did, you're going to have that fine blood stain.

Dr. Sherry Schwartz, forensic psychologist, how often have we seen the killer state that I tried to resuscitate them, I clutched them, I held them to my chest, I hugged them. That's how I got the blood transfer. Yes, exactly. That would probably be the natural place for him to go. Something else that he says, not once but twice on that 911 call that's very striking to me is, I've been up to it now. It's bad.

To me, that sounds like a confession. Dr. Sherri Sports, let me ask you a question. I mean, you're the forensic psychologist. You're the one that wrote criminal behavior and where law and psychology intersect. What do you make of a little noticed fact that Maggie Murdoch's phone was taken from the scene and discarded out on the street? It's a good, it's a good ways. I've been there from the home. There's a really long driveway out to the road and you can't see the Murdoch hunting lodge as they call it from the street. What do you make of the fact that the killer took her phone number one and then threw it

away out on the street? I find that to be very significant, behaviorally speaking. I agree. That is significant behaviorally speaking. Now he may try to say, or the defense may try to say, well, that was somebody running away from the crime scene with this particular evidence, but then why not take other things? Really what it suggests is possibly what Joe Scott Morgan is saying, that it might be somewhat of a staged crime scene or, you know, happened hours earlier. And so somebody took the time to try to discard some of this evidence.

That was actually me that said that. And I'm wondering if- Sorry, Nancy. To me, it would make more sense if, in fact, he murdered his wife and son, that he did it before the hospital visit, because how could he orchestrate them both being there unless he planned it? And what would be the significance of taking Maggie's cell phone unless he wanted to erase something off the cell phone?

Exactly, because... This guy, Dr. Sherrie Schwartz, is so messed up on drugs. I mean, he's now, as you heard, defense attorney Troy Slatenstate, he's got 51 embezzlement type counts against him right now. He's being investigated regarding the deaths of multiple people, including a young man that lived nearby, Stephen Smith, a housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, his son, Paul, was involved in the death of a young girl, Mallory Beach, on the family boat. Who knows if this guy had the wherewithal to remove fingerprints? And when you're talking about blood transfer,

a blood transfer could be explained away by the defendant saying, I held them, I hugged them, I tried to perform CPR. But as Joe Scott Morgan was talking about blood evidence, blood spatter means you were near the body at the time of the murder. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. In the last days, finally happiness for Buster Murdoch, who endured the murder of his mother and brother, then sat every single day through the trial of his father, disgraced attorney Alex Murdoch, remaining loyal to the end to his dad. Finally, happiness for this young man who has endured so much.

And he got the catch. His wife, Brooklyn, a native of Rock Hill, South Carolina, went to college in Alabama, got her degree there in political science. She graduated law school, University of South Carolina, sometime between 2018 and 2021. She then took a position at a respected law firm in Hilton Head 2021. Buster Murdoch had been a law student at USC as well. He left under a cloud. But after the murders of his mom and brother, who knows if he can ever bring himself to go back to law school.

He has stayed out of the public eye since his dad was convicted for the two murders. I recall during the trial, Brooklyn White comforting Buster as best she could in the courtroom as the evidence poured from the witness stand. What happened in that courtroom? Okay, what is her name? Maggie and Paul. Maggie is her name? Yes ma'am. Okay. And please hurry. We're getting somebody out there too. Me asking you these questions. Don't slow them down, okay? And you sure they're not breathing?

Is he moving at all? Your son? I know you said that she was shot, but what about your son? Nobody's there. Not even one of them. What is your telephone number? Ma'am, I'm not particularly really, no ma'am. Okay, to Troy Slayton. We have to take into account as we listen to this 911 call. Alex Murdock, didn't he also call 911 after he was shot in the head and put up much the same story that an unknown assailant had driven by him and out of nowhere shot him in the head and whoops, he lived.

What about that? Is anybody making that parallel? You're trying to say that this is an Academy Award winning performance, Nancy? I'm saying it's been, it was rehearsed. Okay. Because didn't he, wait, didn't he call 911 when he was shot on the side of the road, Joe Scott? Yes, he did, Nancy.

He sure did. And so this, to me, as an investigator, I'm looking at a pattern developing. He got away with it the first time, potentially, and now he thinks he's going to get away with it again when he's feigning this gunshot wound to the head at some unknown perpetrator. I mean, Troy Slayton, can't you just see a prosecutor playing all these 911 calls, especially the one on the side of the road where the dope dealer confesses reportedly that Murdoch hired him to shoot him and hear Murdoch crying and carrying on on the phone just like he's doing here? And as a defense attorney, we would say there is no playbook for the horror that a person

would... Oh, he's come up with something new. Oh, I want to beat my head against the wall. You say that every time. That a person would express once they find some sort of horrific situation like his wife and child being killed. But he sounds the same way in his own 911 car when he's staged a shooting on himself. Same thing!

All that breathing and the gulping and the whining. Same exact thing! Let's go back to the staging of the scene. You're going to lie. It's something you want to talk about. Go ahead. I can't wait to hear this. So if there's physical evidence that bodies were moved

from the place where the murders happened, so that way they look like something else, then yes. And if somehow Alex Murdoch is connected to that movement of the bodies, that would be really damning evidence for him. That would be a big whoopsie for you to explain the next time we talk about this, wouldn't it? Unless he was moving the body in order to perform some sort of life-saving measure. Oh no! If he was moving the body in order to perform CPR

or to try and resuscitate them. See, that's why you make all that money because you just spun that out of thin air like Rumpelstiltskin. I mean, you just spun it into gold. Amazing, amazing what you just did right there. Guys, with all the knowledge we now are amassing, I'm really interested in these 911 calls. Take a listen to Alex Murdoch in Hourcut 28. Are they close, ma'am? Yeah, they've been around with you ever since. You've got on the phone with me. I have multiple people coming out there to you. 28. I already touched them trying to get a, um, to see if they were breathing.

Okay. Well, I just don't want you to move anything just in case they can get any kind of evidence. Okay. Oh, I'm gonna call, I need to call some of my family. Okay. Well, do me a favor for me, whenever you see the officer or the medics, cause they're all coming to you. Absolutely. Okay, but we have them come in,

turn on the flashes on your vehicle so they can see you, okay? You got the flashes on for me? I do. Wow, he sure calms down pretty quickly. Did you hear that? Yeah, I got him on. I'm calling my family.

I'm calling my lawyer. I'm calling my dope dealer. So, okay, let me go back to you. Dave Mack joining us, Crimeonline.com investigative reporter. Tell me again, the report that there is direct physical evidence linking him, Alex Murdoch, to the double murders. At least one of the weapons used in the double homicide belong to the Murdoch family. We know that law enforcement impounded a 2021 Chevy Suburban registered to the Murdoff family. We know that law enforcement impounded

a 2021 Chevy Suburban registered to the Murdoff law firm from the scene. We know that deputies found shell casings at the scene. This is a report from Fitch News. Sled agents requested the sheriff's deputy search the area near the crime scene for video surveillance systems on the morning after the murders.

We don't know what they found there. On June 16th, sled agents were collecting evidence in a swampy area near the Sockahatchee River about two miles south of Moselle. And Maggie Murdaugh's cell phone was found along a rural South Carolina road just outside the family's 1700 acre hunting lodge the day after the murder. Host 1 Straight out to Dr. Sherri Schwartz, forensic psychologist, joining us. Dr. Sherry, how do you analyze what you heard on the 911 call? Well, I mean, there's so many things, right? I mean, he starts off, he's very emotional,

he's crying, he's gasping for air. And then as you pointed out at the end, he's gasping for air and then as you pointed out at the end he's very calm and matter of fact it's very striking to me that in the midst of this horror and waiting for first responders he needs to get off the phone to contact family I mean you know have you given up totally you know you who are you calling what family do you need to contact and why at this moment you know, have you given up totally? You know, who are you calling? What family do you need to contact? And why at this moment? You know, how are you gathering your thoughts in that way? And he also says, you know, that he did touch them to see if they were breathing,

but he doesn't mention anything about trying to render AIDS. Well, wishers, including crime stories, wish Alex Murdoch's son, Buster Murdoch, and his new wife happiness. As they try to forge a new life, his father, Alex Murdoch, behind bars, for two life without parole sentences in the murders of wife Maggie and son Paul. Alex Murdoch now appealing those convictions. We wait as justice unfolds. Goodbye, Paul. Alex Murdoch, now appealing those convictions, we wait as justice unfolds. Goodbye, friend.